This was the question I was asking myself as I waited for my coach to arrive.  It was 1995,  and ten minutes prior to my first coaching session.    My soon-to-be coach was a professor in my graduate psychology program.  He’d ventured into coaching first as an exploration, then as an avocation, becoming more and more enthusiastic about it the deeper he went into the training.  Ultimately, he would give up private psychotherapy practice as well as teaching in favor of coaching and writing which he still does today.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

So here I was in my duplex; graduate student, part-time substitute teacher, saturated with psychotherapy-being in therapy was a program requirement-and curious about what this coaching thing was all about, hoping it was different from therapy.  When it comes to personal growth and moving up the psycho/social/spiritual evolutionary ladder, I’ll try just about anything.   But I’d had enough of delving into my childhood and my dysfunctional family in the therapy room.

Coaching, it turns out, is practically the polar opposite of psychotherapy.  While therapy focuses on pathology, or what’s wrong in the client’s life, coaching turns instead to what’s right, what strengths the client brings, where the client has been successful in the past, and celebrates and uses these strengths and successes to help bring about whatever change the client wants to work on.  In therapy, the therapist drives the session; coaching is client-driven.   Therapy feels like a pounding followed by a pressure-hose cleansing; coaching feels like a revelation followed by a joyful celebration.

My new coach and I had agreed to complete the initial session in person; follow-up sessions would be held over the telephone.  He had explained that the initial interview would last perhaps an hour, and that the once-weekly sessions following would take approximately 30 minutes.  There would be a total of three sessions per month and he asked for a commitment of 3 months, which is the time it usually takes to initiate and sustain lasting change. I had agreed, albeit somewhat skeptically.

He arrived and we began working.  The interview was thoughtful, compassionate, and insightful.  And it took nearly an hour.  By the end of the session, we had identified some areas to work on, and I set some goals.  He even gave me “homework.”  Since this was fifteen years ago, I don’t remember what the specific goals were, but let’s say one was to stop fighting with my mother and establish a better relationship with her, and that the second one was to meet someone who could become a life partner.  Now that I think of it, these just might have actually been the first coaching goals I set for myself.

How I would accomplish these goals would be in nice, comfortable baby steps.  Regarding my relationship with my mother, the “homework” might have been, let’s say, to end a phone conversation with her (rather than let an argument escalate), in a respectful and thoughtful manner, the moment I felt her starting to push my buttons.  In the case of the relationship, my homework might have been to join a dating site, or to research a group activity that I enjoyed, and join it.  The goal might have even been to do both if I felt it appropriate.  I was to report my level of success back to my coach on our next session.

Setting these goals served a number of purposes:  It kept me conscious and focused, and forced me to be present, especially with my relationship with my mother; it allowed me to look at my life in terms of what I knew I needed in order to move forward, and it enabled me to draw on strengths I knew I had but had forgotten about.

This was, as I mentioned, fifteen years ago when coaching was even newer and more unknown than it is now.  I am now a certified wellness coach.  A requirement of the certification program, just as it was in my graduate psychotherapy program, was to work with a coach.  Only in this case it was to be a peer coach.  My coach and I began working together in November in preparation for testing, and although we are both now certified, we are still working together. I think this speaks volumes as to the power of the work.

Coaching brings out the best in both client and coach.  For the coach, the richness comes from the client’s courage and willingness to make the journey, and for the client it’s about being heard, acknowledged and celebrated.  In my work with my coach, that is the power for me, and it is what has allowed me to move into areas in my life that I never dreamed I could or would.

Coaching is truly a remarkable process.  It is a celebration of renewal and rebirth comparable to none I’ve experienced.  If you are thinking about working with a coach, I hope you have the openness to give it a try.  I think you will be happy you did.